I Love You, I Miss You (I Hate You, I Don't)
by bookstvnerdlove
Summary: Sometimes, on her days off, Beth thinks about what she misses, who she misses


_Disclaimer: I don't own anything_

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**I Love You, I Miss You (I Hate You, I Don't)**

On nights that she's not required to work a shift - to _contribute_ - she likes to take her bed sheet up to the roof of the hospital and watch the stars. She knows it's dangerous, if _they_ found out she'd probably be taken out and left. She knows the rules. _Don't break the rules._ That's number one. _You earn your place._ That's rule two. The rest don't matter, not really. They're structures and keep people in line, they're for people who never learned how to survive, for people who weren't _her._

She casts furtive glances around the wing where her room is located. There's always somebody around, some cart rolling by, some pretend doctor - like they all are - with a syringe, waiting to sterilizing something. Waiting for the next thing to happen. But every now and then there are quiet moments. Moment like now, when she can see the exit stairs down the hall, the crushed plastic, no longer illuminated, but as bright as a beacon to her.

(Rick would be proud of her. She's checked for cracks and fissures in the cement and she knows which wings to avoid and which are safe from prying eyes.)

Tonight, she sighs as she takes her shirt off to make a pillow, head leaning back as she watches the way the sky turns from pink and purple and to the dark, dark blue of night. Some nights she closes her eyes. Others - like tonight - she stares at the stars and tries to remember the names of all the shapes and patterns and stories that they tell.

She doesn't think of Maggie. If she thinks of Maggie her eyes tear up and she knows that the next time she's down in the ward, she'll see her sisters face in every woman who comes in for aid, in every dead body they wheel out to the back and burn. She doesn't want to see her sister that way. Not even in hallucinations.

(Rick never warned her against these fissures in her heart. She doesn't know why she does this, tortures herself with memories of a life that _was_ when faced with the reality of what is.)

Her father warned her of these cracks in her foundation - just under the surface, same as everybody else - once. His hair already white, his beard rough to the touch, her favorite sensation, the way that it would scrape against the top of her head when he pulled her close. Not often, but he somehow always knew when she needed a hug and when she needed to go far away from the world, into her own head, to get lost for hours.

She'd been thirteen and just crushed by the boy she'd been eyeing for months. Her father pulled her close and told her that everybody had cracks just like these. _Some people_, he'd said, _made the cracks bigger. Others filled them in. _He'd told her to find somebody who filled the cracks in.

(He'll never know that she did, she thinks. She hadn't even known. Not till now. Not till it was gone.)

She doesn't usually mind the structure. Some nights, though, some nights Andrea would be proud of her, she thinks, on those nights she mouths off to them. Face to face and skin burning red, them asking whether she cares if she lives or dies. Snidely, she must not care much, they'd say to each other as she rails against their rules and order and meager view of survival.

But it wasn't like she'd _asked_ to join their band of survivors. She'd had her group, found her people, learned how to survive along with them. Here, well _here_ she'd been brought. Trussed up and tired of the struggle, her journal long gone, in a pack beside a house with Daryl Dixon screaming her name.

(Screaming as if she was precious to him. Screaming her name in the same way that hours earlier he had held her eyes and told her _things. _Things that made her feel powerful and something else.)

His face comes to her, too. Same as Maggie's. She sees him in the faces of dead men, of haggard men, of men who sound like the South, like they were raised on the backs of motorcycles and moonshine. Men that pull her heart and twist it into knots until her chest feels like it's too tight for her body.

She collects things now - possible weapons, medical supplies - hidden in a knapsack she's sewing out of scrubs and needle and thread that she finds lying around in unused rooms. She doesn't hesitate, not like the others, she hops over bodies and crushes their brains with her boots. She rifles through pockets and wallets and says a prayer for them.

(She doesn't know if she'll ever leave but she likes to think Michonne would be proud of her for even thinking maybe, one day, that she could break free of this.)


End file.
